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Wednesday, May 15, 2019

Aquinas on Private Property

In the previous posting on this subject — private property in general, and under what
circumstances (if any) private property ceases to exist — we examined the
arguments Msgr. John A. Ryan of the Catholic University of America used to
justify substituting the definitions of social justice and distributive justice
used by the socialists and modernists of the 1830s and 1840s for those of the
Catholic Church derived from Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy.

Aristotle

To explain, in
classic Aristotelian philosophy, including that of Aquinas, distributive
justice has only ever had one meaning: distribution according to a pro rata share of inputs.In economic terms, distributive justice is
“the most classical form”(Compendium of
the Social Doctrine of the Church, § 201) of the virtue, the
out-take principle.It is based on the
market value of one’s economic contributions.This is the principle that everyone has a right to receive a
proportionate, market-determined share of the value of the marketable goods and
services he produces with his labor, capital, or both.

In Catholic
social thought prior to Pope Pius XI, “social justice” was not a virtue, but a
principle.As explained by Msgr.
Aloysius Taparelli, S.J., social justice was the principle that should guide
all social conduct and attempts to improve the social order, especially meeting
the needs of the poor.

Msgr. Aloysius Taparelli, S.J.

Specifically, all
acts, including charity, justice, or any other virtue, must conform to two
requirements: 1) they must be virtuous or at least not intrinsically evil in
and of themselves (i.e., must not
violate the natural law), and 2) they must have a general intention to benefit
or at least not harm other individuals, groups, or the common good as a whole.

In other words, Taparelli’s
principle of social justice added a proviso to the classic “principle of double
effect.”That is, it is no longer merely
enough not to intend evil, no individual act, even if virtuous in and of
itself, is permitted if it harms the common good.This was not original with Taparelli; it had
always been present in Thomist philosophy.What was new was the application of the term social justice to it and
the emphasis of a good intention for the common good.

Msgr. John A. Ryan

For example, it
is good to accumulate goods in order to take care of one’s dependents and
maintain one’s state in life.It becomes
evil — although not objectively or intrinsically so — if someone accumulates a
vast surplus of goods and by so doing
prevents others from having a sufficiency.If others have enough, how much someone has should be a matter of
complete indifference to anyone else.Accumulation is wrong — socially unjust — only if someone else or the
common good is harmed.

To Ryan and the
early nineteenth century socialists, however, “social justice” meant
redistribution on the basis of need, of which there are two types, voluntary
and involuntary.The voluntary type of
redistribution is philanthropy.

It comes almost
as a shock to many people that the early socialists were not opposed to
accumulated wealth per se.They were opposed to accumulated wealth that
they did not control or have access to.

Robert Owen

Saint-Simon,
Fourier, even Marx all sought out rich people as patrons to finance their
schemes through philanthropy.Only
Robert Owen, a rich industrialist considered by many to be England’s first modern
socialist, financed his schemes out of his own pocket when he couldn’t get
others to give him the money (and he almost bankrupted himself in the process).

It was only when
the rich refused to finance the proposals of the socialists that the socialists
turned to coercive redistribution.Since
this was “distribution,” they completely rejected the classical understanding
of the term and labeled coercive redistribution “distributive justice.”

In contrast to
Taparelli’s principle of social justice that subordinated everything to the
natural law, the socialists’ principle of social justice subordinated
everything including the natural law to the goal of social and material
betterment, especially for the poor.Where Taparelli’s assumption was that the end does not justify the
means, the socialists’ assumption was that the end does in all cases justify
the means.

Thus, if the natural
right to private property seems to be what is holding back progress, then
private property must be abolished, with life and liberty following in short
order.This is directly contrary to what
Aquinas taught.

Thomas Aquinas

For Aquinas, the
right to be an owner (the right to property) is absolute in every human
being.At the same time, what an owner
may do with what is owned is necessarily limited (the rights of property).As he explained in the Summa Theologica, IIa IIae q. 66, a. 2,

Man has a twofold competence in relation to material things. The
first is the title to care for and distribute the earth’s resources. Understood
in this way, it is not merely legitimate for a man to possess things as his
own, it is even necessary for human life.Man’s other competence is to use and manage the world’s resources. Now
in regard to this, no man is entitled to manage things merely for himself, he
must do so in the interests of all, so that he is ready to share them with
others in case of necessity. This is why Paul writes to Timothy, As for the
rich of this world, charge them to be liberal and generous. [Condensed]

Aquinas
could hardly be any clearer.To be an
owner is part of human nature and is therefore absolute in every human
being.What an owner may do with what is
owned and what and how much may be owned, however, is necessarily limited by the natural law, personal needs, and
those of other individuals and the common good as a whole.

In general, an
owner may not use what is owned to cause harm.That, however, does not mean that someone else may take what the rich
have.The rich are told to share.The poor are not told to steal.

But what about
socialism?Aren’t goods owned in common
contrary to these principles?

Aquinas: ownership is a natural right.

Yes, common goods
(not to be confused with the common good!) are inconsistent with these
principles, but they can be permitted for the sake of expedience if (and only if) no one is harmed by
making a good common.This is why, for
example, land or other privately owned things taken by dulyconstituted authority for a legitimate public
purpose must be paid for at a fair price.As Aquinas explained,

Community of goods is said to be part of the natural law not because
it requires everything to be held in common and nothing to be appropriated to
individual possession, but because the distribution of property is a matter not
for natural law but, rather, human agreement, which is what positive law is
about, as we saw above. The individual holding of possessions is not,
therefore, contrary to the natural law; it is what rational beings conclude as
an addition to the natural law.

In other words,
the decision as to what specific goods to be owned privately and those to be
held in common is a matter for rational discussion, and not one to which a
blanket rule can be applied, e.g.,
everything must either be privately owned or held in common, regardless of the
consequences.Interestingly, it is easy
to show how mandating that all goods be held in common inflicts great harm, but
a society in which everything is privately owned is not only conceivable, it
has been the case more than once in history.

For example, the
feudal system allowed both privately owned land* and public land handed over to
private ownership for administration.The former was inalienable, the latter was alienable for just cause (or
royal whim on occasion, if the king or liege lord didn’t mind risking a
rebellion).Medieval jurists took the
principle of Roman law literally: everything to its proper owner.

*“The Commons” were not really common property, but specific land in
which each member of a community had defined private property rights, e.g., the right to graze three
cows.The Commons despite the name were a form of
corporate ownership, not common ownership.

We will look at
how these principles are applied in the next posting on this subject.